Anecdotal accounts say Reefer Madness was funded by a religious organization, though others have erroneously claimed it was sponsored by the U.S. Army. Most likely neither is true.

In order to appear legit, exploitation films peppered their films with statistics and quotations from "authorities." For this reason, the crusading Dr. Carroll has a sit-down with Mr. Wyatt, a J. Edgar Hoover-type figure at the "Federal Offices" of the "Bureau of Investigation." He in turn lectures Dr. Carroll on the need for mass education, providing valuable statistics off the cuff.

In one scene, a theatre marquee is visible, advertising, "Terry Rooney in Any Old Love." This indicates that the scene was shot on a set that had just been used for the 1937 independent film Something to Sing About, in which James Cagney plays the role of bandleader-turned-actor Terrence "Terry" Rooney.

Director Louis J. Gasnier was a frequent collaborator with Hirliman. Their partnership yielded such films as Bank Alarm (1937), The Gold Racket (1937), and Stolen Paradise (1941), made not for RKO, but various poverty row studios.

The Paris-born Gasnier is said to have discovered silent comedian Max Linder. Immediately after moving to the U.S., Gasnier began co-directing adventure films and serials with Donald MacKenzie, including such legendary titles as The Perils of Pauline (1914) and The Exploits of Elaine (1914). In the talkie era, he worked with several Hollywood superstars, including Cary Grant (The Last Outpost [1935]) and Clara Bow (Parisian Love [1925]). Exploitation films were often directed by Hollywood veterans, but usually after they were well past their artistic prime.

Screenwriter Arthur Hoerl had two years earlier written the screenplay of another exploitation film, Enlighten Thy Daughter (1934), sold as "A Smashing Indictment of Parental Prudery!"

The film was resurrected as a cultural oddity by Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for Reform of Marihuana Laws (NORML), who supposedly located a print in the archives of the Library of Congress in 1971. He purchased a print of the public domain film for $297, then screened it in New York as a fund-raising event in May, 1972. New Line Cinema founder Robert Shaye saw the film and introduced it to the midnight movie circuit that same year.

According to film critic J. Hoberman, "Reefer Madness was extensively screened throughout California as a fund-raiser for an electoral campaign to decriminalize marijuana" in the Fall of 1972.

When it was first circulated as a midnight movie in 1973, Reefer Madness was double-billed with Martian Space Party (1972), a half-hour sci-fi parody created by the Firesign Theatre.

Underground filmmaker Jack Smith wrote an article for The Village Voice describing the climate at a late 1972 midnight screening in New York, "the scum of Bagdad audience with the yelling of witticisms, sound effects, booing, cheering, etc., pathetically eager and straining to encourage the screen to give the hallucinations they know very well are locked up in the movie business."

There have been numerous remakes of Reefer Madness. An ironic musical version by Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney gained popularity in Los Angeles after its April 28, 1999, debut. On October 7, 2001, the play had its off-off-Broadway premiere. The New York Times grimly reported, "According to recent reports, irony is finished in American pop culture... There is further evidence, however, to be found at the Variety Arts Theater, that at least one extreme form of the ironic arts -- its flashiest and silliest incarnation, known as camp -- is indeed ready for last rites." The play was in turn adapted for the screen for the Showtime network in 2005. Variety warmed to this version, saying, "this infectious, quite elaborate musical production will probably shine best on the small screen.

Compiled by Bret Wood